last time against Villa at the Lane.
It’s two weeks short of 12 months since that 4-4 draw with Spurs coming from 4-1 down, on the night they celebrated their 125th anniversary, with Kaboul’s injury time equaliser after which he jumped into the arms of the elated Martin Jol.
It didn’t save BMJ, he was gone 14 days later to be replaced by Ramos. And what’s changed? Well Ramos’ side don’t win many league games if any and last night was no exception.
Not much, last night started well with the news that Jenas was on the bench – got to be a first can’t remember Martin doing it much – but then it was obvious that it was only due to him being rested along with Bentley for the upcoming UEFA Cup game against Wisla Krakow on Thursday and then against Wigan in the Premier League on Sunday. This was a ploy Jol tried on a number of occasions during his reign, it never worked then and it still doesn’t especially when you’re meant to rest the players against the weaker sides which out the three Spurs play against this week Villa certainly were not.
Hopefully right back Gunter was also being rested because Corluka was worse than hopeless and he didn’t have the excuse of being new, yes he’s new to the team but not new to the English game so that old standby can be discounted as the excellent Young and Agbonlahor ran the Croat and the rest of the defence ragged. Dawson is nowhere now, gone from being a good player to a liability who only plays the man and not the ball and can’t be seen as the automatic replacement when Ledley is unavailable. But everyone knew that except it seems those in charge of recruitment who were more interested in getting every penny for Berbatov than addressing the real issues in the team.
Last time out was a shocker for Paul Robinson as he gifted Villa a couple of goals, this time around not much has changed either. Gomes came in for a lot of praise after the Chelsea (ChelseeA © Big Phil) game and rightly so he was outstanding that day as he has been in other games and was last night when he prevented Villa going 3-0 up with some fine ‘keeping. But and it’s a big but there’s been moments in every game, David James moments, moments that lead to nicknames like Calamity, moments of flaps and flounders. There’s at least one in him each game, Robinson was punished nearly every time with his will Gomes be more lucky?
Ramos is angry but won’t panic, how long will it take for him to panic? The league form since his arrival has been atrocious and how long will we have to put up with the excuses, firstly a new manager in a new league, then the hangover from the Carling Cup victory now Keane and Berbatov.
Pick your best team play them week in week out so they can gel together, start winning then if you’re out of the relegation places and still in some cups then you can maybe prioritise the odd time.
On a separate issue after it was found that Danny Guthrie of Newcastle broke the leg of Hull’s Craig Fagan in the Tiger’s 2-1 win over the Toon at the weekend with his stupidly wild lash at the player shouldn’t new rules be brought in about punishments.
When something this blatant happens the punishment should match the loss of the player out injured. Guthry shouldn’t be able to turn out for his club until Fagan is fit to play for his.
Though the clubs would just start arguing that he didn’t mean it or that because there was two players behind him it wasn’t a professional foul 🙄